The LSE Directory / Crypto exchanges
bitFlyer is a Japanese cryptocurrency exchange headquartered in Tokyo, founded on January 9, 2014 by Yuzo Kano and Takafumi Komiyama. The exchange runs a retail web and mobile platform for spot trading of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and other digital assets, alongside a separate venue, bitFlyer Lightning, which offers a real time order book, margin and futures products including an FX BTC/JPY perpetual contract, and API connectivity aimed at algorithmic and professional traders. bitFlyer's differentiator within the crypto exchange category is its regulatory footprint across three jurisdictions rather than one. It operates under a licence from Japan's Financial Services Agency, a FinCEN Money Services Business registration plus state money transmitter licences that, after a West Virginia licence issued in February 2026 and services launched there in July 2026, cover 49 US states and the District of Columbia (Hawaii is the one remaining state outside its footprint). In June 2026, bitFlyer Europe became the first Japan-originated exchange to receive a Crypto-Asset Service Provider licence under the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation, granted by Luxembourg's CSSF and covering custody, administration, crypto-to-fiat and crypto-to-crypto trading, client order execution and transfer services across all 27 EU member states. This lets it serve both retail traders through its standard app and institutional or professional traders through Lightning's order book and API. Kano, a former Goldman Sachs derivatives and bonds trader and University of Tokyo engineering graduate, and Komiyama, who previously worked at Konami, Sony and Goldman Sachs and was CTO at TIMEINTERMEDIA before co-founding bitFlyer as its CTO, built the exchange into Japan's largest by trading volume within its first few years. Kano stepped down from the CEO role in 2019 following a 2018 Japanese regulatory order to strengthen anti-money-laundering procedures, which had temporarily halted new account registrations, and was reappointed CEO of bitFlyer Holdings in March 2023. In May 2023, the New York State Department of Financial Services fined bitFlyer USA 1.2 million dollars for cybersecurity-regulation violations, citing insufficient periodic risk assessments and policy documentation gaps, and the company agreed to a remediation plan. In March 2026, bitFlyer's 24-hour trading volume rose about 200 percent during a sharp Nikkei selloff tied to an oil price spike, a larger percentage jump over that period than Coinbase (112 percent) or Binance (75 percent) recorded, reflecting a wave of Japanese trading activity moving into crypto as domestic equities fell. Combined with the February 2026 West Virginia licence and the June 2026 EU MiCA authorisation, these developments mark a period of active regulatory and market expansion for the exchange going into the second half of 2026.
